


The Bruises He Gave Me

by alannablue



Category: House M.D.
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-15
Updated: 2015-07-15
Packaged: 2018-04-09 13:18:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,754
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4350284
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alannablue/pseuds/alannablue
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Wilson (first person POV) lets House win at Scrabble and begrudgingly accompanies him to karaoke.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Bruises He Gave Me

I let House win at Scrabble. I engineer it, actually. What I’m more interested in at the moment is why, and I don’t know to this day what the exact answer to that is. I’m not sure when it started, precisely, either, but I do know that it was before I started giving him blowjobs.

He doesn’t know that I let him win. He thinks, with his conflicting superiority-inferiority complex, that he learned to beat me, I guess. I will never disabuse him of this notion, although his infernal smugness sometimes when he wins makes me want to scream it at him, or at some other times, like when he makes me angry (which is often, not surprisingly). But I know I won’t ever tell him, partly because he probably wouldn’t believe me – he would scoff and turn those eternally disdainful eyes on me – and partly because he’s given me every indication that if he can’t beat me at almost everything we do, he’ll up and leave.

And that, more than anything, petrifies me.

* * *

 

I remember the first time we had a conversation. It wasn’t the first time we’d met, strangely enough, but looking back, nothing about us was ever ordinary. I don’t know why he started talking to me that day. Maybe it was because he’d had a bad few weeks (he lost a patient), or maybe he was bored. I have more unanswered questions about House and our relationship than about any other time in my life, which is appropriately unsettling. I’m sure that also why he’s still so important to me, even if I don’t talk about it as much as I think about it.

Most of my insecurity stemming from my relationship with House comes from the fear that I was only a way to amuse him, that I was a convenient waystation for entertainment value, adoration, and later, one-sided sexual gratification. Part of me will always wonder why he chose me in the first place, and taking that for granted, why he chose to leave me in the end.

One of my observations about House that I’m especially proud of is that he doesn’t do anything he’s not good at. He’s a genius, no doubt, and good at plenty of things naturally. But he doesn’t stretch himself as a person, refuses to be seen as weak, hides behind his very narrow universe of the hospital and his apartment and the bar. As one of the only people in his life that actually tried to see and was allowed to see the real House, it’s important to note that for as cocky and arrogant as he is, there’s a scared little boy inside him that will never grow up. As he likes to put it, he’s “damaged.” My point is that he only puts himself in situations where he’s going to come out on top, so that he can always be perceived as “the man.”

After that initial conversation, it seems like I was swept up into his whirlwind life very quickly. I became consumed with spending as much time with him as possible, which at first he resisted, then embraced, then sought out, as the months went on. I recall those early encounters, me trying desperately to be part of his life and feeling rejected when he went about his routine and shut me out, either deliberately or obliviously. I will give him credit that he remains a mystery to this day, as so few people do.

I never thought we were “dating,” even during our brief sexual stint, although everyone else did. My friends knew the truth, or at least, my side of the truth. No one knows his side, damnable man that he is. The bar where we originally started hanging out was full of our friends – mine, his, and both of ours. I guess this is where I should point out that these bar friends are not what I would call true friends, but merely acquaintances. House wouldn’t call them friends, either, but that’s probably because he doesn’t refer to anyone by a relationship label, except “mother” and “father” and various other blood relatives. If I were Jung, I’d say he has a problem with accepting peoples’ roles in his life and avoids labels like “friend” or “boyfriend” for that reason.

After the first few weeks of casually hanging out at this bar (and by casually, I mean that he wasn’t pursuing me, but I was in my own way, pursuing him), it changed to something else. We would seek each other out, me much less subtlely than he. He, after all, is Mr. Aloof. We spent hours together every day, laughing, sharing private jokes, observing each minute detail of the other, creating a cocoon where we shared a singular experience whether we were physically next to each other or not.

Hence, our bar friends thought we were dating. Actually, they thought we were fucking. I denied it flat out, told everyone we were just friends, because I wasn’t ready to admit to anyone how I felt about House. It was hard enough trying to deal with liking him privately, considering how much of an asshole he could be, to me and to mostly everyone else. No one believed me, save perhaps some of House’s bar buddies.

I don’t think House denied it to anyone, and perhaps encouraged it for all I know. More likely, he didn’t say anything either way, which led those same people to think that we were fucking, probably. People believe what they want to believe. In our case, I’m not sure why they wanted to believe it so badly (except maybe by my own osmosis of wanting it to be true), but they did, which of course, secretly pleased me. A note here: I was obviously secretly pleased by almost everything about our – it’s still so hard to use the word – relationship, and I definitely was not allowed to be overtly pleased by anything, unless it had to do with House’s talents, and even, then he would mock me for it most of the time.

House was famous everywhere he (we) went, not just at the hospital. Strangers would approach me all the time and ask this or that about House. It was alternatively annoying (because we weren’t dating/fucking) and exhilarating (because I wanted to be). The fact that he didn’t deny it, at least not in front of me (which I choose to assume is because he was being classy – he had to know I was half in love with him), gave me another mental tick mark of Things That Meant Something.

I felt like Cain a lot of the time – am I House’s keeper? But to honest, I kind of was the authority on all things House. I knew his schedule, I knew where he was (or could surmise it to a scarily accurate degree), and I could almost read his mind and speak just like him for anyone who asked me a question about what House would say about something. He often stole my jokes and took credit for them. If I started to speak up about it, he’d turn those calculating blue eyes on me and silently plead for my silence. He’s a tough guy to resist, not that I ever thought once about denying him anything. I couldn’t help myself – he was my addiction at the time and no way was I giving up my crack.

Also, he and I found ourselves saying the exact same thing at the same time frequently, more frequently than either of my wives and I ever did. I thought that it Meant Something, that we were meant for each other, I suppose (hopeless romantic that I am). I was secretly thrilled by it, which I’m only partially embarrassed to admit. The more and more we hung out, the more I had created this perfectly imperfect relationship in my head where it would last forever. How many people, I thought, communicate like we do, sometimes without words?

I remember one night I was waiting to go out to see him and watching tv on the couch. He called, or I called him, I don’t recall, and we talked briefly about our day. He told me he had been watching “Pleasantville,” which he’d never seen before, because “that chick from that presidential show has a great rack.” And I had been watching the same movie at the same time, also for the first time. Little things like that made me wonder if we were cosmically connected somehow. Sounds stupid now, but it felt real. Enough small coincidences like that helped convince me that I wasn’t foolish to pursue him.

Little known fact about House: he likes to sing karaoke. More surprising than the fact that he’s actually pretty decent, is his song choice: boy band songs. Ambiguously gay songs. A partial list: “God Must Have Spent A Little More Time On You” by N’Sync, “This I Promise You” again by N’Sync, “Careless Whisper” by George Michael, “Red Light Special” by TLC, - and the biggest shock to anyone who hasn’t seen him sing it – “I Will Always Love You” by Whitney Houston. The man has the sexiest falsetto I have ever heard/seen. Hilarious and at the same time, arousing.

He really is a performer, in every sense. Everything is staged for his maximum enjoyment if he can possibly help it. I’m a natural enabler, which is mostly why we worked at all. I helped pad his already over-inflated (but possibly completely fake) ego, and he liked me in that role (although he would mercilessly tease me about it sometimes, too – he couldn’t help himself). I think he thought that anyone who could possibly actually like the real House must be deficient in some significant way, and therefore, a target for his criticism.

We spent countless hours at karaoke. He sang; I watched, applauded, and laughed my ass off. The main thing I hated about karaoke was that as cheesy as the songs were that he sang, he never sang them *to* me. (Mental negative tick mark.) But I endured (had a love-hate relationship with) karaoke for House, which I like to look at as a metaphor for the rest of our dysfunction. He performed, I watched. My role was completely passive, with brief periods of insurgence on my part. And when he was done with a song (with me), he walked off stage and never looked back. Until the next time.


End file.
